Material about Usenet
written or recommended by by Jukka Korpela

Material written by me

Netiquette material:

• The seven "don't"s of Usenet, or How to excel without doing anything
• Why you shouldn't ask for E-mail responses on Usenet
• Why and how to crosspost
• No vCard please (on Usenet)
• Korpela's 42 Laws about Usenet (not entirely serious)

People who know Finnish will find much more material by me about Usenet in Nyysiopas.

Technical material (attempts to present official protocol specifications more readably):

• Hypertext version of RFC 1036 - Standard for interchange of USENET messages
• Internet message headers - quick reference

I wrote the documents mentioned above when I had noticed that those topics are not sufficiently covered in the usual material on Usenet usage and conduct.

Material recommended by me

There is so much "netiquette-like" material, some of which is rather outdated, that I decided to compose the following list of especially recommendable reading (without implying agreement with all of their content):

• Playing Nice on Usenet by Stan Brown
• How to Make the Best Use of Usenet News by Hubert Partl (discusses largely the same basic issues as my "seven don'ts" mentioned above, but with a more positive tone)
• Bottom vs. top posting and quotation style on Usenet; a concise essay by Tobias Brox, to which I've added a list of documents discussing the same topic
• Newsgroup Etiquette by aol.com; this too is a concise, constructive "mini netiquette"
• NewsReaders.com - a rich source of information, especially on different programs you can use for reading and sending Usenet articles ("newsreaders") but also on many other Usenet-related issues
• Netiquette Guidelines. Old but still useful, and published as an (informational) RFC. It calls Usenet "NetNews" and discusses it in section One-to-Many Communication).
• news.announce.newusers FAQs, particularly the following items there:
  • A Primer on How to Work With the Usenet Community. Simple, non-technical guidelines.
  • Hints on writing style for Usenet. Concise instructions on how to be brief but not vague.
  • Rules for posting to Usenet. More technical information, e.g. about proper article format.
  • What is Usenet? A second opinion. Originally an extensive comment on What is Usenet?, this has turned out to be more illustrative than the original text. Somewhat hard to read due to the personal style, but rewarding.
  • Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette. Enjoyable satire.
• The Usenet section in the Internet FAQ Archives. Partly listing the same documents as the list above, it also contains good information on special topics such as
  • Cancel Messages FAQ
  • Moderated Newsgroups FAQ
• Usenet Access Guide by Uzi Paz. A practical guide which concentrates on "how do I ..." and "how does it work" questions.
• news.newusers.questions Official Home Page

Note: Some of the documents in the list above are rather old. To a large extent, this is because they have been written carefully and they have been widely accepted among experienced users. Naturally, their wording, examples, and details can be slightly dated.

For searching for Usenet articles by keywords, Deja (previously DejaNews) has been most popular, and very useful. Having been bought by Google, the service is still in transitional state, at Google Groups. The following simple search form is just an interface to it; for more possibilities, see Advanced Groups Search and Google Groups help page.